These Were Newcastle’s Four Best Players Against Villa

Written by Dr. Ed Harrison

8:36am Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017

Commented 62 times

One of the good things that emerged from the game on Tuesday night was the form of both Aleksandar Mitrovic and Jack Colback who haven’t been at their best of late, but both players had good games against Aston Villa.

And both are in the top four of our Man of the Match poll for the game.

Henri Lansbury scoring that own goal He looks in pain as karma comes back to bite him Our best player on Tuesday night was Matt Ritchie and it’s good to see the former Bournemouth player full of confidence and running.

That’s important with Dwight Gayle again worryingly out of action for a number of games, after he had to leave the field after only 33 minutes with a recurrence of his hamstring injury.

Matt didn’t score but he was in the thick of things and it’s a great time for Matt to come into his best form and hopefully keep scoring goals for us over the next few weeks while Dwight is out.

Matt has 12 goals so far this season, eight behind top scorer Gayle.

Aleksandar Mitrovic finished second in the voting and the 22 year-old Serbian looked full of running and he’s coming into form after getting more playing time.

He led the line well and of he’s still a huge favorite with Newcastle fans and he looked a lot more confident on Tuesday night.

With that confidence Mitro can still be a big hero for us this season as we approach a crunch time of the season in the next few weeks.

Jonjo Shelvey plays well in almost every game for us these days and he was good again against Villa.

You could see his pent-up emotion after his nemesis Henri Lansbury kindly scored an own goal after 59 minutes to put us 2-0 up – Jonjo went bonkers in front of the Newcastle fans.

The former Liverpool playmaker is just one of the many players who have improved this season under the great coaching and guidance of Rafa Benitez.

Jack Colback just edges out the impressive DeAndre Yedlin for 4th place in the voting and the local lad played well especially in the second half and he ran his socks off for the cause.

His passing looked a lot better in the game and he had a great shot in the second half that was well saved by the Aston Villa goalkeeper.

With Isaac Hayden out for four weeks after ankle surgery, it’s important Jack shows his best form as we push and push for a win in every game.

It was a professional performance by the lads after a poor first half – but these are the types if wins we have to grind out in most of our remaining games if we are to make it back to the Premier League.

It doesn’t have to be pretty to be really effective.

That was a huge win for us on Tuesday night – there’s no doubt about that.

62 comments so far

Perhaps Benitez has decided to up Colbacks remit from sound – deadener to being a little more forward push. He was a different player second half, the run for goal and shot, although creditable would probably have been better finished if his forward team mates had helped him out positionally instead of standing about watching it. Perhaps they were caught by surprise 🙂

I don’t think 7 wins will be good enough it is looking like 93 points for auto as in 2013 /14 So 8 wins assuming at least a draw with Huddersfield and Brighton All those nuggets who wanted Huddersfield to beat Brighton a few weeks ago are now very quite!!!!

Ou rnext three away games will be critical to gaining an automatic promotion place. After these games our remaining fixtures are not too bad, But both Brighton & Huddersfield do not have any really difficult games either.

We should be in a much better (or worse) position after Brighton, Huddersfield, Reading, all away.

We need a definite improvement on Monday ‘s first half to get anything out of these games.

Ibiza I agree with your stats I guess the real question is we simply must not lose to Huddersfield or Brighton . These two games are likely to define the eventual outcome I hope fat Ashley is now realising that Rafa knew what was around the corner

At home I have doubts about how Rafa can set a team up to play against teams that we should be comfortably beating BUT I have no worries when it comes to playing away from home against our nearest rivals!

Can see us suffocating Brighton , Reading and Huddersfield and collecting 2 wins and a draw out of those games!

Lee I hope you are right I think Huddersfield will beat us and we wil draw at Brighton But let’s hope I am wrong Could not get an away ticket for Huddersfield but I have one in home section ,it will be hard to keep quite

Wwsbrd I think they are as their name suggests terriers in midfield !!!and press so hi they will disrupt our build up from the back making it very difficult for the centre backs This was exactly how they beat us at sjp They also have some quality stickers and never give up ,just have a look at their late goal stats it’s pretty amazing

yorky All true (they are a decent champ team i admit) but we don’t concede many goals and we score a lot, our away form is great and we are better than them, I don’t see a reason to think they will win

health update

The stage four cancer remains stabilized and while the PSA count has risen a little, there's no evidence the cancer has spread.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in early 2017 after being in remission for six years.

There is no cure - but there are treatments to prevent the cancer from spreading further.

I am so thankful for the latest results and in awe of the doctors and nurses at the Rex Cancer Center in Raleigh, North Carolina

Now when is Rafa going to sign his new deal and start making Newcastle great again?

Ed Harrison

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